Tuesday, March 28, 2017

MERKEL UBER FUCKTARD

Is this even a serious question? Trump can't even scratch his old-man ass w/out 15 people helping him, and they all still get it wrong.....

Who
Is Now the Leader of the Free World? Merkel or Trump?

Stephen Blank, Newsweek, March 26, 2017

Two months into Donald Trump’s presidency, it is clear that
Trump cannot control himself or his own administration.

Sadly,
this observation applies across the board in foreign policy. Trump first warmly
greeted Taiwan, threatened a trade war with China and then abruptly announced
that he recognized the One China principle and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
essentially subscribed to China’s interpretation of the bilateral relationship
while threatening war with North Korea.

These episodes predictably led some to suggest that
Beijing would regard him as a paper tiger or that, perhaps more accurately,
Trump and his team have no idea what constitutes sound policy.

When it
comes to Mexico, his immigration policies, which are distinguished by a lack of
policy coordination and respect for U.S. laws, have provoked a furor in Mexico,
even though Trump’s own son-in law unsuccessfully tried to mediate the issue.

Stephen
Blank writes that we cannot count on a uniform approach to the many policy
challenges involving U.S. relations with Europe as long as Trump continues his
impromptu comments and powerful forces within the White House conduct their own
“back-channel” policies.

On Israel, the White
House excluded the State Department from discussions with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, then Trump blithely revoked 50 years of U.S. policy by
abandoning the two-state solution to Israel’s long-running problems with its
Palestinian population. The next day, Trump’s U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley
contradicted him, stating that the U.S. still supports a two-state solution.

On Iran, the
administration has both attacked the Iran deal and supported it as the best
available option of many bad alternatives. On February 20, Secretary of Defense
James Mattis went to Iraq to reassure Iraqis that the United States, despite
Trump’s stated desire to seize Iraqi oil, was not really serious about doing
so.

But the most serious and unsettling of these multiplying
manifestations of dysfunctional policymaking have occurred with regard to
European security.

As
Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and advocated a deal with
Russia, his administration remained silent about expanded Russian violence over
the armistice lines in the Donbas or Putin’s announcement that Russia would
recognize the passports and other “official” documents issued by the separatist
governments of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

Yet
officials said that sanctions would remain, that we can never trust Russia and
that it must return Crimea to Ukraine.

However,
at the same time, Trump’s private lawyer and some dodgy Ukrainian and Russian
associates tried to deliver their own “peace plan”—that allowed Russia to
“rent” Crimea—to Trump’s National Security Council (NSC), whose leader, former
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, was about to be sacked for lying about his
contact with the Russian government.

There
is no coherent policy on Europe or Russia. As key members of the administration
stated their unwavering support for NATO at the Munich Security Conference and
the preceding NATO ministerial meetings, others announced that if allies did
not reach spending targets of 2 percent of gross domestic product, the United
States would “moderate its commitment” to NATO.

While Vice President Mike Pence praised the EU in
Brussels and reinforced Washington’s desire for continued cooperation, Trump
adviser and NSC member Steve Bannon attacked it in a meeting with the German
ambassador as a flawed organization and stated the administration’s preference
for bilateral trade deals.

Later, in meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Trump showed
that he doesn’t understand how NATO works, and continued to press Germany on
its trade balance with Washington and deprecated the EU. Most recently,
Tillerson announced he would skip a NATO ministerial meeting and go to Moscow
instead.

While
some of this incoherence may be attributed to inexperience and the lack of
candidates in high-ranking policymaking positions, the overriding impression is
one of amateurishness, astonishing ignorance and congenital dysfunction in the
White House. Indeed, the State Department, due to the inability to staff its
higher echelons, has been virtually sidelined as an effective player in U.S.
foreign policymaking since Trump was inaugurated.

European
officials like Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission,
have urged Europe to reject Washington’s demand that Europe increase defense
spending, and Federica Mogherini, EU high representative for foreign and
security affairs, has urged Europe to resist American interference in its
affairs.

Finally,
the EU is studying ways to reject Trump’s nominee to be Washington’s ambassador
to the EU, Ted Malloch, in advance of his nomination.

While there will be no deal with Moscow, at least for
now, it is by no means clear to what degree the U.S. commitment to NATO will
stand or how transatlantic trade issues will be resolved.

Bannon,
a self-described Leninist and partisan of the alternative right, has espoused
the takeover of Europe by similarly minded right-wing populist parties even if
they, like the National Front in France, have received money from the Kremlin. This stance puts a Trump
confidante and member of the NSC at odds with Washington’s staunchest ally on
the continent, Angela Merkel.

It’s impossible to predict what U.S. policy toward Europe will
be and equally difficult to say who will be leading the policy. While we may
hope that Mattis, Tillerson and Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster will impart
the virtues of consistency, coherence and predictability, as well as a uniform
approach to the many policy challenges involving U.S. relations with Europe, we
cannot count on that as long as the president continues his impromptu comments
and powerful forces within the White House conduct their own “back-channel”
policies.

We have
seen too many examples in European history of policymaking by such
irresponsible figures like Nicholas II’s court camarilla to be reassured by the
presence of strong-willed yet capable people in the Cabinet or the White House
as long as the government itself remains subject to extra-constitutional or
unaccountable pressures and persons.

Since
nature abhors a vacuum, Europe, presumably led by Germany, must take greater
responsibility for its future security. Sadly, Jacques Chirac’s taunt in 1995
that the position of leader of the free world is vacant now applies.